Posts Tagged ‘Churchill’

“Fascism” is second only to “racism” in the canon of political epithets that get tossed around these days. It has become a kind of catch-all phrase for describing behavior or even just an attitude someone doesn’t like. But who actually are the fascists? At this stage of history one would be hard pressed to find a genuine Fascist anywhere, at least since Il Duce got strung up during World War II. Fascism actually was an Italian social-political movement based on extreme nationalism, corporate statism, improvised claptrap, and black-shirt bully tactics against opposition and in the pursuit of power. It is really only this last tactic that still resonates, and the main reason the term is still in popular use. Thus, when someone says so and so is a “fascist,” the most they can mean is that they are behaving like a fascist.

Fascism was considered to be of the “right” primarily because of its nationalistic component, but the collectivism, top down organization never was. The Nazis added genuine racism to the equation, but always called themselves national socialists, which tells you something. Strip away the nationalism and these actual movements have more in common with communism, due to things such as dictatorship, party monopoly on power, the use of violence, repression, political and state control of everything, that is characteristic of leftism.

Nevertheless those on the left still like to perceive themselves as being involved in the struggle against “fascism,” which can include just about anything they don’t like. People they disagree with are categorized as “fascists” in order to dehumanize them beyond the bounds of civilized discourse. But most other people understand it to primarily mean the use or threat of violence, mob actions directed towards intimidation and silencing of political opponents. Now since there is not a shred of evidence that the people so targeted are engaged in any of these tactics, it ought to be crystal clear that these soldiers of the cause are themselves behaving like fascists.

They are the fascists when they frequently prevent people from speaking on American university campuses. The intimidation, blocking of passage, and physical threats they use are directed against not some fringe right political movement, but mainstream conservatives, and even public officials. They can get away with this because college administrations and faculty are either sympathetic or too intimidated to resist them, and their targets are generally soft intellectuals. They can get away with this because there is currently no countervailing group on hand to deal with them. There has not been a single instance of a left-wing speaker being attacked by a right-wing band of “fascists.” That is a fantasy.

Thus it is easy to be brave in the struggle against “fascism” when there are no Fascists around. The longer term danger for them is that there is a vast reservoir of people, currently peaceful, who can easily physically overpower them, lean right, and are well-armed. If these people, or even a sliver of them, were ever to become mobilized it would be over for the Left.

But for now the fascist tactics are being employed by one side with impunity in a playground environment of soft targets. They are having their way in an artificial environment that is out of touch with reality. The time is overdue for the government to begin enforcing standards on pain of eliminating funding from institutions that have destroyed any semblance of a civic culture.

The obfuscation of terminology should not delude as to who the real fascists are. For as Churchill once predicted, the fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.